The present disclosure relates generally to healthcare systems for capturing and maintaining patient healthcare records and employing information in the records to proactively alert hospital workers to a condition that places patient health at risk.
A healthcare provider, such as a hospital, typically admits and treats some number of patients on a daily basis. Upon admission to the hospital, a healthcare worker can create a record that includes medical and/or personal information associated with each patient. Depending upon the size of the hospital, the healthcare provider can create and maintain a very large number of these medical records, and such records are typically created and then stored as an electronic medical record (EMR) in a healthcare system. Depending upon the size of the hospital, the healthcare system can operate in a single computational device, such as a personal computer or other device, or the healthcare system can be distributed in a plurality of computational devices that are connected to over a network (healthcare system network or simply the Network) to one or more servers which operate to, among other things, capture and store the electronic medical records. In addition to including patient medical information, an EMR can also include the identity and location (hospital room) of a hospital bed to which a patient is assigned. Hospital beds are available that include physical and physiological sensors which are connected over the Network to the Healthcare System. Information collected by the sensors can be processed at the bed by a controller or can be transmitted to the Hospital System for processing and storage in an EMR associated with the patient currently occupying the bed.
While physiological measures of a patient's health can be employed to proactively alert healthcare workers of an impending patient health crisis, healthcare systems do not currently operate to proactively alert healthcare workers to a condition at the bed, such as a hospital bed configuration, which may be unsatisfactory for a given patient based on the patient's condition or risk.